istanbul noteshttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com
culture : politics : economicsSat, 31 Jan 2015 21:59:16 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/790073ad569bc02eefde629fdb623f72?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngistanbul noteshttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com
A hiatus ends: Istanbul Notes returnshttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/a-hiatus-ends-istanbul-notes-returns/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/a-hiatus-ends-istanbul-notes-returns/#commentsWed, 03 Jul 2013 23:11:33 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=971]]>It is two years since I have posted with any regularity on this blog and 18 months since I have lived in Istanbul, a city that still fills me with joy and exasperation in more or less equal measure. Distance made it surprisingly easy—necessary perhaps—to detach from the relentless insanity of the Turkish public sphere. But the events of recent weeks make disengagement impossible. On a personal level, too many friends and loved ones have turned their lives upside down to take a stand in—or report to the world about—what has become an increasingly poisonous dispute about Turkey’s future. On a professional or intellectual level, too many of the issues that preoccupied me on this blog—questions about democracy, about party politics, about the nature of opposition in a system dominated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—have become more pressing than ever.

If Istanbul Notes ever had a point, it was to try to think about the kind of developments we’ve seen since May 31st, when Gezi Park stopped being about Gezi Park and became about the much bigger mess that is Turkish political life. Something entirely unexpected happened that night and in the weeks that followed. There has been too much hyperbole about the significance of the protests, too many assumptions about the inevitability of their having a transformative effect on Turkey. There has been too much warmth and fuzziness about the undeniably infectious creativity and humour that has informed the protests. In important respects, Turkey has moved backwards over the past month, not forwards. And yet.

I think it’s probably fair to say that underpinning most of the writing on Istanbul Notes in its up-to-2011 incarnation was a sense of bewilderment at the passivity with which a nominally democratic country responded to political developments that were feared and loathed by a large minority of the population. The CHP often bore the brunt of any criticism on this blog—and let’s face it, a party that can muster only Deniz Baykal and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in response to a government it views as an existential threat to the republic deserves all the opprobrium it gets. But the abject ineffectiveness of the CHP has always been part of a broader problem, namely the gulf that has separated private conviction and political action on the part of the very many Turks who want to see a change of government (or, perhaps more realistically, a change of direction) in their country. And that’s where something changed on May 31st. I’m not yet convinced that it will prove to have been a lasting change, and it certainly wasn’t a sufficient change in terms of realising the protesters’ often unrealistic objectives. But it was a real change and a necessary one. After years of waiting for a deus ex machina to deliver them from Mr Erdoğan, it seemed to dawn on the prime ministers’ opponents that it fell to them as individuals to take some responsibility for the public articulation and advocacy of the changes they want to see. That is a development both to be welcomed and to be prodded and poked by anyone who cares about Turkey.

So Istanbul Notes returns. It does so from afar, which will inevitably mean that developments are missed, nuances overlooked. From friends and colleagues in Turkey, I would ask for patience in such instances and for corrections in the comments section when needed. Beyond that, it just remains for me to say that it’s nice to be back.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/a-hiatus-ends-istanbul-notes-returns/feed/0istanbulnotesTurkish monetary policy: playing catch-up with realityhttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/turkish-monetary-policy-playing-catch-up-with-reality/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/turkish-monetary-policy-playing-catch-up-with-reality/#commentsThu, 27 Oct 2011 14:28:09 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=959]]>And so the inevitable has come to pass. Turkey’s central bank has departed from its controversial commitment to a loose policy stance in the face of growing signs of overheating and vulnerability in the economy. The bank signalled yesterday that a phase of marked monetary tightening has now begun.

True to form, the bank went about this tightening in an unorthodox way. But at least it is now pulling unorthodox policy levers in pursuit of orthodox ends. As recently as August, the bank was still loosening policy, easing its benchmark interest rate despite frothy GDP growth rates, accelerating inflation and a current-account deficit of increasingly eye-watering proportions.

*****

The bank’s benchmark interest rate is its one-week repo rate, which stands at 5.75%. The simplest and most transparent way for the bank to have tightened monetary policy would have been to hike this rate. Instead, the bank yesterday announced a new policy of switching on and off the supply of money at this rate, depending on conditions on any given day.

When the one-week rate is unavailable, commercial banks seeking money from the central bank are forced to pay up to 12.5% for money provided on an overnight basis. By switching between these 5.75% and 12.5% rates from day to day, the central bank aims to find a balance appropriate to the needs of the economy.

The bank’s governor, Erdem Başçı, seems quite proud of this new policy, declaring that it gives him a level of flexibility enjoyed by no other central bank in the world. One is tempted to suggest that the reason other central banks haven’t rushed to adopt this level of policy flexibility is that there are other, simpler, ways of achieving the same ends.

Yesterday, the central bank withheld funding at the 5.75% rate. Today, it made 8bn TL available at that rate. And so it will go in the days and weeks ahead. Does this provide the bank with a means of tightening monetary policy to varying degrees? Sure. But it feels a little bit like trying to control a room’s lighting by switching the lights on and off repeatedly rather than by using a dimmer switch.

*****

There can be little doubt that a shift in the central bank’s policy was required. For some time alarm bells have been ringing. In June, I wrote here about the threat posed by Turkey’s current account deficit. At that point it stood at about 8 per cent of GDP. It has since moved closer to 10 per cent.

That kind of dynamic is both unsustainable and dangerous. In my earlier post I warned of the risk of a chain reaction being set in motion, with a depreciation of the lira feeding through to higher prices, interest rate hikes and a sharp slowdown in economic activity. We have since seen something like this play out.

The lira slumped in value by almost a fifth during the first nine months of this year. Consumer price inflation is already above the central bank’s 5.5% target and will increase again in the remainder of the year due to recent tax hikes and the rising price of imports. We’ve just seen the beginning of (indirect) interest rate rises to restore stability. It now remains to be seen how significant the impact will be on activity in the real economy.

*****

Given the risks to the economy’s stability, it is to be welcomed that Turkey’s central bank now recognises that steps must be taken to tighten policy. But surely moves in this direction could have been taken some time ago. Instead, the economy has been allowed to run a little out of control, taking the current account deficit with it. Managing things back to stability would have been easier had an earlier start been made.

Accelerating GDP growth has been viewed too uncritically by too many people as an uncomplicated sign of Turkey’s rising strength. But growth that is allowed to keep accelerating turns into an unsustainable boom. And booms beget busts. This is the bread and butter stuff that monetary and fiscal policymakers get paid to grapple with. Turkey’s authorities have lagged behind the curve for months and now find themselves playing catch-up with reality.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/turkish-monetary-policy-playing-catch-up-with-reality/feed/0istanbulnotesTurkey’s economy: will GDP growth hit a wall?https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/turkeys-economy-will-gdp-growth-hit-a-wall/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/turkeys-economy-will-gdp-growth-hit-a-wall/#commentsWed, 22 Jun 2011 14:44:27 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=934]]>Earlier this month the German magazine Der Spiegel published a brace of articles about Turkey and accompanied them with a graphic comparing Turkey’s economy and those of a number of EU member states. A cursory glance at this graphic, which I’ve reproduced below, suggests clearly that this is Turkey’s hour. Far from being the economic basket-case of old, it would appear that a youthful Turkey is surging ahead of an ageing, debt-ridden and generally sclerotic EU.

Would that it were so simple. But it isn’t. The numbers in Der Spiegel’s graphic present the most superficial of comparisons between Turkey’s economy and those of its neighbours to the west. Take the comparison of GDP growth figures. While GDP growth is a crucial number, in isolation it is a poor barometer of a country’s overall economic standing.

For one thing, on its own it tells us nothing about the size or composition of the economy doing the growing. Less developed economies frequently enjoy periods of rapid GDP growth, because they have so much scope for improvement and so much best practice to borrow from others. Similarly, for more highly developed economies each extra unit of additional GDP is that much harder to eke out because the low-hanging fruit have long since been picked.

So when we look at the Der Spiegel graphic and see that Germany’s economy grew at significantly less than half the pace of Turkey’s in 2010, we shouldn’t jump to any simplistic conclusions. Turkey’s economy isn’t twice as strong as Germany’s, or twice as resilient, or twice as productive. Despite its much lower growth rate in 2010, it remains an obvious fact that Germany has a much larger and more advanced economy than Turkey, that it can produce goods and services of much higher value than Turkey, and that it can thereby deliver its citizens a correspondingly higher level of material well-being than Turkish citizens enjoy.

The counter-argument one often encounters at this point suggests that it’s only a matter of time before Turkey catches up. The European Union is tired and on the wane while Turkey, with its young population, is only getting into its stride. But this, for the moment, is hubris. Yes, Turkey’s population is large and young. But it is also very poorly educated. It will struggle to make the transition into the kinds of higher-value economic activity that will ultimately be needed if Turkey is to sustain strong rates of economic expansion.

*****

Economists refer to the existence of a ‘middle-income trap’ which sees countries’ economic growth slow once they move from being a developing economy to one that needs to innovate for itself. We can tentatively identify where this middle-income trap lies. According to research published earlier this year by Barry Eichengreen and others for the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US, periods of rapid catch-up by poorer economies tend to bump up against this wall when per capita GDP—that is, GDP divided by the size of the population—reaches $16,470. At this point, the research claims, average growth drops from 5.6 per cent to 2.1 per cent.

Where does Turkey stand relative to this figure? The chart below plots the levels of per capita GDP in Turkey and five EU member states from 1970 to 2009.

The comparison between Turkey and Germany suggested in the Der Spiegel graphic appears remote when we look at this second chart. In 2009, Turkey’s per capita GDP in 2009 stood at $9,910. Germany’s by contrast was more than three times higher at $32,487. But not only does Turkey have a vast distance to travel before it would reach current German levels of economic development, it even has a significant way to go before it gets to Mr Eichengreen’s $16,470 middle-income trap, when we can expect growth to become more difficult to sustain.

None of this is to say that Turkey’s current economic performance isn’t impressive. It is. But we shouldn’t get carried away. I have noted in a previous post that there are immediate vulnerabilities in the form of a yawning current account deficit. But the chart above coupled with this idea of the middle-income trap points to a longer term cause for circumspection. There is no inevitability about Turkey remaining on a steeply upwards economic trajectory that will see its economy converge any time soon with those of its EU counterparts.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/turkeys-economy-will-gdp-growth-hit-a-wall/feed/1istanbulnotesDer Spiegel | Turkey and the EUGDP per capita in Turkey and five EU states Election 2011: a victory for the West Bank, you say?https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/election-2011-a-victory-for-the-west-bank-you-say/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/election-2011-a-victory-for-the-west-bank-you-say/#commentsThu, 16 Jun 2011 10:23:24 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=927]]>Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan, a man whose self-aggrandising style of leadership has already been coming in for increasing criticism, outdid himself in his victory speech following Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Sometimes public figures push themselves to a place beyond parody. This was one of those occasions.

Let’s be clear at the outset, however, that this is not to begrudge Mr Erdoğan his general air of jubilation. He was a convincing victor in Sunday’s election, demonstrating once again his easy dominance of the political scene and copper-fastening his position as Turkey’s most significant leader since Atatürk.

Much in Mr Erdoğan’s speech was to be expected. His avowed commitment to a collaborative process of constitution-making was particularly welcome, even if its sincerity can’t be complacently assumed given some of his words and deeds in office. But what are we to make of the following sentence? What do we make of a national leader who responds to domestic victory with words like these, invoking the international scene in quite this way?

“Believe me, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as İzmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakır.”

At times, Mr Erdoğan is derided somewhat unfairly for his egomania and his delusions of grandeur. There’s no doubt that he’s possessed of these traits, but to focus on them alone is to ignore unfairly the political astuteness that’s required to build and sustain the kind of success that he has enjoyed. But with this sentence, he really does seem to have conformed to the stereotype and lost the run of himself.

If one wanted to go out of one’s way to interpret his words charitably, one would suggest that all Mr Erdoğan meant was that Turkey’s neighbours should take succour from Turkey’s combination of (relative) strength and (relatively) democratic institutions. This is the by-now-familiar narrative of Turkey as a model for the nascent moves towards increased democracy in the middle east.

But of course the words are more loaded than that. It’s hard to put one’s finger on quite what animates them, but there is certainly a large degree of condescension at work—as if the states (and the Palestinian non-state) he mentions should be grateful to be offered crumbs from the table of Turkish democracy. Lest we forget, Mr Erdoğan speaks as the leader of the state that succeeded the region’s imperial power.

More troubling still, however, is the mounting enthusiasm with which Mr Erdoğan seems to want to insert Turkey into the flow of events in the middle east. Pursuing an assertive foreign policy is one thing (and I believe that a Turkish government of any stripe would be aggressively expanding its non-European trade and diplomatic ties). But throwing oneself in such a feet first fashion into perhaps the world’s most protractedly poisonous geopolitical cauldron smacks of strategic folly.

One starts to wonder where this might lead and exactly what Mr Erdoğan understands his own position in the region and the world to be. It is not unreasonable for him to take personal gratification from his sustained domestic electoral success. The AKP’s dominance in Turkey is down in large measure to his individual magnetism, to the comfortable sway that he personally holds over much of the country.

In Turkey, Mr Erdoğan is simply untouchable at this point in time. But to project that sense of personal invincibility beyond the borders of the Turkish state and into the wider world? That strikes me as one of the more worrying developments in Turkey in recent months and years.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/election-2011-a-victory-for-the-west-bank-you-say/feed/1istanbulnotesWhy Turkey’s current account deficit mattershttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/why-turkeys-current-account-deficit-matters/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/why-turkeys-current-account-deficit-matters/#commentsWed, 15 Jun 2011 13:43:36 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=900]]>For obvious reasons, all eyes in Turkey have been focused in recent days on the outcome of Saturday’s parliamentary elections. But the release on Monday of April’s balance of payments data by the central bank shouldn’t be overlooked. Turkey’s widening current account deficit is shaping up to be one of the country’s potential achilles heels. It has political as well as purely economic implications, opening the country to the risk of economic disruption of a sort that the AKP has not yet had to grapple with.

Before looking at developments on Turkey’s balance of payments, let’s remind ourselves of what it measures. In essence, the balance of payments is a record of a country’s transactions with the rest of the world. It comprises two main components. The current account covers trade in goods and services, flows of investment income, and a number of smaller financial transfers including workers’ remittances and international aid payments. The second component, the capital account, measures capital flows including foreign direct investment (FDI), bank loans and deposits, and purchases of government and corporate debt.

As a matter of accounting necessity, the current and capital accounts sum to zero. This means that any deficit recorded on the current account is matched by a surplus on the capital account. Another way of putting this is to say that if a country runs up a current account deficit, it must finance it with increased inflows of capital. Such a country is basically spending beyond its means on imported goods and services, thus becoming reliant on overseas capital to sustain itself. This is the position in which Turkey now finds itself.

*****

The chart below plots the development of Turkey’s current account deficit since the mid-1990s. The clearest trend is obviously the rapid widening of the deficit in the early-to-mid 2000s. This was when the economy began to grow rapidly following the deep crisis of 2001. The deficit plateaued at around 6 per cent of GDP from 2006 to 2008. There was then an anomalous year in 2009, reflecting the impact of the global financial crisis on Turkey’s economy—the deficit narrowed sharply in line with a slowdown in economic activity.

In 2010, however, the economy returned to rapid growth and the current account deficit widened again relative to its pre-crisis levels, reaching 6.4 per cent. Nor have things stopped there. Indeed, the deterioration of the current account has worsened worryingly in the early months of 2011. According to the data released on Monday, a rolling 12-month measure of the current account deficit stood at around 8 per cent in April. That is not sustainable.

*****

The most significant contributor to the recent widening of the current account deficit has been an explosion of credit in the economy. In response to the global financial crisis, a wave of liquidity was unleashed by the advanced economies’ central banks to keep the system afloat. Much of this money has found its way into emerging economies such as Turkey’s, in search of higher returns than are on offer elsewhere. These inflows have sustained a credit boom in Turkey, which in turn has financed a binge on imports. And this surge in imports has pushed the current account ever further into the red, to the point that it now represents a real threat to the stability of the economy.

The easiest way to understand this threat is to think of the economy as having become unhealthily dependent on the inflows of capital it has enjoyed in recent years. Ideally this dependence would be unwound gradually, with the Turkish authorities engineering a rebalancing of the economy away from its current import-intensity. This is what the central bank has been aiming at with its unorthodox twin-pillar monetary policy, which is designed both to slow capital inflows and to limit Turkish banks’ lending. (The central bank has reduced its key interest rate to deter inflows, while increasing the capital reserves that banks must hold for their short-term liabilities.)

But there is no guarantee that Turkey will have unlimited time in which to effect this rebalancing in a gradual manner. If global liquidity (and thus inflows of capital to Turkey) were to dry up rapidly, the impact here could be swift and could lead to significant volatility.

If the tap providing overseas capital were turned off, a chain reaction would be set in motion. The value of Turkey’s currency would fall, reflecting the fact that a reduced level of global capital would now be chasing Turkey’s lira-denominated assets. This would prompt a return to accelerating inflation, because imports would now cost more to buy with a depreciating lira. This in turn would prompt a round of interest-rate increases by the authorities in an effort to bring prices back under control. And these higher interest rates would lead to a sharp slowdown in economic activity.

This process would move the current account swiftly back towards balance. But the price paid would be economic instability of a sort that hasn’t been seen here in a decade. That would be bad news for the AKP, which has benefited greatly from the fact that its time in power has thus far been one of almost uninterrupted economic stability.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/why-turkeys-current-account-deficit-matters/feed/2istanbulnotesTurkey's current account balance 1995-2010Election 2011: whither the CHP after the AKP’s biggest victory yet?https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/election-2011-whither-the-chp-after-the-akps-biggest-victory-yet/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/election-2011-whither-the-chp-after-the-akps-biggest-victory-yet/#commentsMon, 13 Jun 2011 12:59:35 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=896]]>So, the results are in and they make for miserable reading for Turkey’s main opposition party, the CHP. If the CHP is searching for a silver lining, they will find one in the fact that the party increased its share of the vote from 21 per cent in 2007 to 26 per cent yesterday. Looked at in isolation, that’s a nice little bounce. But when seen in the context of the AKP’s remarkable feat in increasing its vote above the 50 per cent mark, the CHP’s result starts to look decidedly anaemic.

The CHP can still only call on one voter for every two the AKP is able to count on at the polls. The party really needed to be nudging 30 per cent in this election to create a sense that momentum might be building behind it. Securing 26 per cent does not feel like the result of a party that the electorate will trust with power any time soon. Moreover, the additional votes that the CHP won were cheap votes taken from smaller parties that faded in significance in this election. The CHP needed to begin the process of eating away at the AKP’s vote. It didn’t.

So where does the CHP go from here? It is difficult to see that the party has any choice but to go back to the drawing board. It has been clear from day one that the emergence of the AKP recast the Turkish political landscape in important ways. What is becoming ever clearer is that that wasn’t a one-off event, but a dynamic and ongoing process. The longer the AKP stays in power, the more popular it is becoming and the more decisively it is setting the terms of political debate in the country. Sure, its opponents are becoming more vocal, and with good reason in my view. But the electoral arithmetic is clear. The AKP is delivering for Turkish voters. Sufficient numbers simply do not want what the CHP is offering them.

****

There will be a temptation for many to look for weak points in the AKP’s result. And they exist, notably in the fact that the party’s parliamentary representation will not just fall, but will fall below the level required to let the party re-write the constitution without relying on other parties’ support. But let’s not kid ourselves—this is a remarkable result for the AKP. I would go so far as to suggest that it is their most impressive yet. In 2002, they went to the electorate following a period of instability and economic crisis—they were in the right place at the right time to profit from the incumbent parties’ decimation. In 2007, they were able to exploit public anger at the military’s interference in the choice of Turkey’s president.

In both cases, the AKP was a potent focus for public anger at other actors in Turkish public life. This helped it to punch above its weight. But that kind of dynamic didn’t apply in yesterday’s election. On the contrary, yesterday’s poll came after months and years of a steadily developing narrative which highlighted the increasing risks posed by the extent of the AKP’s grip on power. That’s a narrative to which I happen to subscribe. But yesterday’s result made it even more bluntly apparent than previously that it isn’t a narrative to which the Turkish electorate subscribes. In circumstances less accommodating than those that obtained in either of the two previous elections, the AKP has recorded a record share of the popular vote. Furthermore, it has breached the 50 per cent mark. This gives it strong claim on moral legitimacy, particularly in a country with a highly majoritarian understanding of how democracy works.

*****

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu made a number of important shifts in the way he presented the CHP to the electorate compared to his predecessor as leader, Deniz Baykal. He toned down the party’s defence of Turkey’s secularism and he sought to highlight the party’s socioeconomic policies. But a five per cent bounce doesn’t suggest that this approach gained any meaningful traction at all. The CHP could surely have expected a five per cent bounce just for having ditched Mr Baykal.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that someone is going to have to do something very different if they want to emerge as a serious rival to the AKP. While there is a possibility that fatigue and/or events (such as a sharp deterioration in the economy) may slow or reverse the AKP’s seemingly inexorable momentum, by now it would appear to be at least as likely that the electorate will grow even further accustomed to the AKP as the natural and rightful holders of power in this country. Success breeds success, and the longer the AKP is unchallenged in power the more difficult it becomes for the opposition to suggest that its removal from power is imperative.

While a vocal, substantial and growing minority in Turkey worry deeply about the direction in which the AKP wants to take the country, this election proves once again that a greater number of Turks do not share these fears. That is the reality of political life in Turkey, and much though it may pain them, it is a reality to which the opposition parties will need to reconcile themselves if they are to get back into the business of winning elections.

The AKP is uninhibited in its pursuit of economic growth and profoundly relaxed (to put it mildly) about the prospect of religion being allowed a more prominent role in the public sphere. This policy mix has been shown to work. Granted it is bolstered by other factors, such as the AKP’s powerful grassroots political machine and the massive pull exerted by the leadership of Mr Erdoğan. But if a party espousing broadly right-wing economics and an easy familiarity with piety is winning a steadily increasing share of the vote in three successive elections, a party like the CHP needs to start asking itself some fundamental questions. Here is one to start with: is a platform combining left-leaning economic policy with relatively hardline secularism one from which an election can be won in Turkey?

After last night’s results, that is at least an open question.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/election-2011-whither-the-chp-after-the-akps-biggest-victory-yet/feed/9istanbulnotesElection 2011: what would a non-AKP government look like?https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-what-would-a-non-akp-government-look-like/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-what-would-a-non-akp-government-look-like/#commentsSun, 12 Jun 2011 14:01:08 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=891]]>One of the biggest advantages enjoyed by the current AKP government is the fact that it its nine years in power have been characterised by a level of political and economic stability that is remarkable by Turkish standards. Voters value the AKP not just for what it has and hasn’t done, but also for the fact that it has carved out the political freedom (in terms of its solid parliamentary majority) to accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

This makes life exceptionally difficult for the opposition parties, none of which can plausibly claim to be within striking distance of a parliamentary majority of the sort that the AKP can now almost take for granted. Understandably, the opposition has tried to sweep this inconvenient fact under the carpet. But it’s a challenge of political presentation that they need to stop ducking.

The electorate isn’t stupid. It knows that in a poll like today’s a whole range of different factors need to be balanced. Chief among them may well be the ideological and policy differences between the parties, but their relative prospects as potential governments are of huge significance too.

Like any halfway competent incumbent, the AKP enjoys the advantage of being able to point to its record in government as evidence of its ability to do the job for which it’s applying to the electorate. The opposition parties enjoy nothing similar. The largest of them, the CHP, has only recently recovered to a point at which it can claim to be a just-about normally functioning party. The idea that it is an alternative government in waiting remains laughable.

And yet at some stage the CHP and the other opposition parties will have to bridge this gap with the voters. The AKP is pretty much a certainty to win today’s election, but one has to assume that the situation might not be as clearcut next time around. In which case questions of stability might take on an unusually important role in terms of deciding the extent of any swing away from the current government.

The AKP repeatedly punches above its natural electoral weight, in large measure precisely because it offers the kind of stability that Turkish democracy has failed to deliver in the recent past. Given a potentially credible and stable alternative, it’s my view that a significant body of voters would peel away from the AKP. It therefore has to be part of the planning of the opposition parties—and of the CHP in particular—to find a way of conveying that sense of credible stability. This is something that they haven’t even remotely begun to do.

Consider the CHP. What has underpinned its pitch to the electorate in today’s election? The prospect of a single-party CHP administration? Clearly not. That simply isn’t on the cards and never has been. But the CHP has done nothing to illustrate what it thinks might be on the cards. This isn’t a matter of spelling out exactly what it hopes the post-election landscape might look like, or what the precise terms of any hypothetical coalition negotiations between the CHP and smaller opposition groupings would be. The party simply needs to do more to show that it understands the significance of political stability to the electorate.

For example, while in opposition it needs to demonstrate the kind of instincts for mature cross-party co-operation that in government it would rely on day in and day out if it wanted to make any coalition arrangement last. Maturity doesn’t come naturally to Turkey’s politicians, but in this instance it overlaps with basic political self-interest. If the CHP cannot yet aspire to governing alone, then it needs to show that it is thinking about the ways in which it could govern in collaboration with others.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-what-would-a-non-akp-government-look-like/feed/0istanbulnotesElection 2011: Turkey goes to the pollshttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-turkey-goes-to-the-polls/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-turkey-goes-to-the-polls/#commentsSun, 12 Jun 2011 10:11:08 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=883]]>And so it starts. For some hours now Turkey’s 50 million voters have been making their way to polling stations across the country to cast their ballots in another parliamentary election that must be described in pivotal. This has been the story of the AKP era in Turkey’s modern history. Each of its election victories has marked an important stage in the country’s development, for both good and ill.

When the AKP first came to power in 2002, it was a true watershed moment for the country. First and foremost, it ushered in an era of stable single-party rule that has altered in important ways what this electorate believes it can expect from its politicians. The country was scarred by the years of ineffective coalitions during the 1990s, which culminated in a profound economic collapse. The AKP continues to benefit from the sense that it provided the country with an alternative to that kind of ad hoc back-of-an-envelope governance.

Of course, the AKP ushered in more than single-party stability. The party broke the mould by articulating a form of religiously informed politics which many non-religious voters deemed sufficiently moderate to countenance supporting. This moderation has wavered in the years since, but the party continues to benefit from the votes of citizens who are more interested in the party’s record on bread and butter issues like the economy or health and education policy than on the role of religion in the public sphere. There’s no doubt that the AKP does God in its politicking. But it does Mammon too, with a gusto that at times borders on frenzy. Balancing these sides of the party’s identity has been an impressive political feat, and it has allowed the AKP to build a thus-far impregnable coalition of voters, drawn from very different strands of Turkish society.

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The AKP’s second election victory in 2007 marked another watershed. The party’s first term was by and large a very positive one for Turkey. The country pulled itself back to its feet after economic collapse, and made significant strides in its relations with the European Union. It seems a long time ago now, but the beginning of accession negotiations was a moment of real import in this country’s history.

But it was also in these years that tensions and divisions over the AKP’s plans for Turkey began to bubble away. The total failure of the party’s political opponents to respond to its electoral advances led to the initiative shifting outside of the political realm, setting up a series of hugely damaging clashes between the AKP government and non-political state actors. First, the military tried to impose its will on the selection of a president. Second, the constitutional court tried to ban the AKP for its alleged erosion of Turkey’s secular order.

In both cases, the AKP’s opponents miscalculated badly and left the party stronger not weaker. More importantly, they triggered a response from the AKP’s leader that has been hugely damaging for Turkey and its democratic evolution. Mr Erdogan is a political bruiser, a man who is used to and who thrives on political rough and tumble. He suppressed these instincts during his first term in office, because the politics of the moment demanded a demonstration of the AKP’s capacity to govern responsibly. But one gets the sense that following the failure of the constitutional court’s closure case, Mr Erdogan decided that his position was safe enough to allow him to take the gloves off. In the years since, there has been a steady increase in the authoritarian leanings the prime minister has displayed.

Was this simply a case of Mr Erdogan’s mask slipping and his true political nature being revealed? To a significant extent, the answer must surely be yes. But I think it is intellectually dishonest not to add two caveats immediately here. The first is that authoritarianism is the default setting of Turkey’s entire political class. Mr Erdogan is not the first Turkish leader to exhibit alarming authoritarian tendencies and it is very unlikely that he will be the last. Second, the ill-considered and deeply anti-democratic provocations by the military and the constitutional court in 2007 and 2008 must be borne in mind. Yes, poking a dog repeatedly until it bites may prove that the dog in question does indeed have the capacity to bite. But it also proves that the person doing the poking is an idiot asking for trouble.

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And so we come to 2011 and a set of elections that with almost total confidence we can predict will lead to another term in office for Mr Erdogan and the AKP. In some senses, the political environment is more depressing than at any time in the last decade. Mr Erdogan’s increasingly bombastic and divisive style of governing, coupled with what can only be described as his emergent delusions of grandeur, do not augur well. When combined with his relaxed dominance of the electoral field, they become alarming. These are not ideal background conditions for the drafting of a new constitution, as has been promised following the election.

That said, there are positive developments which should be acknowledged and fostered. Chief among these is the sense that the AKP’s political opponents are finally back in the game. Perhaps Mr Erdogan has inadvertently done Turkish democracy a favour here. By stamping hard on the military and the judiciary, he forced opponents of the AKP to channel their energies where it should have been channeled all along–into democratic politics and the business of persuading citizens of the merits of one political approach over another. A lot of time has been unnecessarily wasted. But in the years to come, this election is likely to be seen as the point at which the foundations were laid for an electoral defeat of the AKP. It won’t happen today. But it will happen.

What will determine the outcome of today’s elections? The broad outlines will be shaped again by the polarisation of Turkish politics, with the AKP likely to comfortably see off its various opponents, who are weakened by being so disparate. But the final result of the election, in terms of the number of seats won in parliament, will come down not to a battle of ideas or a weighing of the merits of the current government, but to the vagaries of Turkey’s deeply dysfunctional electoral system.

The number of parties that make it into parliament has a huge effect on the way the assembly’s 550 seats are distributed. With this in mind, the key thing to look for this evening when the results are announced will be the performance of the hardline nationalists in the MHP. In recent polls, they have been hovering close to the ten per cent threshold for entering parliament, and it is clear that Mr Erdogan’s increasingly harsh rhetoric has been designed in part to lure their voters away and push the party below the threshold. His incentive for doing so is equally clear: if only the AKP and CHP make it into parliament, the resulting two-way distribution of seats would lead to a greatly enhanced AKP majority. That in turn would give the party a much freer hand in terms of drafting Turkey’s new constitution.

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/election-2011-turkey-goes-to-the-polls/feed/2istanbulnotesGauging the likely impact of Sunday’s election in Turkeyhttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/gauging-the-likely-impact-of-sundays-election-in-turkey/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/gauging-the-likely-impact-of-sundays-election-in-turkey/#commentsFri, 10 Jun 2011 14:00:28 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=871]]>Ahead of Turkey’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, Yigal Schleifer, who maintains the must-read Istanbul Calling blog, is making a guest appearance here to answer a number of my questions about the likely impact of the poll. In return, you’ll find my responses to a series of Yigal’s questions over on Istanbul Calling.

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Q1. Assuming for the moment that the election results in another AKP victory, do you think we’ll see the party consolidate its power, or will we see its hold on power loosen as a combination of fatigue and events (notably the economy) start to take their toll?

What I find striking about this election is how after nine years in government the AKP has moved decidedly from being the underdog who came to power and won elections through fighting the established state order to now becoming the big state itself. While in 2002 and 2007 the party ran on a platform that emphasized the injustices committed against its leadership (Erdoğan’s jailing, the military’s “e-coup” attempt to derail Abdullah Gül’s presidential bid) and the need for increased democracy to fight such injustices, this time around their main selling point is a series of “crazy” infrastructure projects for Turkey—everything from a massive canal that would link the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea to what is promised to be the Middle East’s “largest zoo” in Ankara.

In that sense, there are serious challenges that lay ahead for the AKP. While a third consecutive electoral victory is an admirable achievement, particularly in the Turkish context, the party will now have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of corruption, mismanagement and cronyism that has claimed previous Turkish governments as its victim. An argument can also be made that after nine years of extraordinary good fortune on the political and economic front, the AKP could also find itself facing a different and less sunny environment. Clearly there are some troubling economic facts that the government will have to deal with right after the elections. Events in the Middle East, especially in Syria, and developments on the Kurdish front are also presenting the AKP with new challenges that could make its life much more difficult. Meanwhile, the recent scandal over alleged cheating during the state-administered academic exams and the protests over the AKP’s plan to institute an internet filtering regime, both of which led to vocal protests, could be seen as early indicators that the government is losing some of its touch in the domestic arena.

Q2. Assuming once again that there’s an AKP victory, what will this election mean for the prime minister, Mr. Erdoğan, personally?

Clearly, with what is going to be his third straight electoral victory, PM Erdoğan should be considered among the giants of modern Turkish politics, perhaps even only second to Atatürk in terms of his influence and the kind of change he has presided over in Turkey. But, like for the party itself, the case could be made that this election could be something of a highpoint for Erdoğan. Clearly his governing style is facing increasing criticism domestically and, more significantly, from new quarters abroad that had previously been rather bullish on Erdoğan and the AKP. The bruising campaign that he ran, which saw him employ a very nationalist tone to woo MHP voters and take several steps back from some of the positive things has had said earlier on the Kurdish issue, seemed to also do a lot of damage to the PM’s reputation, especially among liberal Turks who had previously supported him and his fight against the military and Turkey’s illiberal established order.

Erdoğan’s desire to create, via a new constitution, a presidential system that would allow him to continue being Turkey’s most powerful politician for another decade, is also raising concerns about his commitment to true democratization in Turkey and about an AKP power grab. Again, looking at the no-holds-barred campaign Erdogan ran, in which he burned many bridges in what appeared to be an attempt to win enough seats so that the AKP will be able change the constitution on its own, only seemed to strengthen the notion that the prime minister was more interested in consolidating power than unifying a polarized nation.

Q3. What does the CHP need to achieve in order to be able to consider this election a success?

This is clearly a make-or-break election for the CHP and its new leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, if the party wants to become a serious alternative to the AKP. That party is on the path towards reforming itself after its several years in the wilderness under the leadership of Deniz Baykal, but it still has a long way to go. In order to strengthen Kılıçdaroğlu’s hand and that of the party’s reformers, the CHP needs to win close to 30 percent of the vote. This will show that the party can attract a good number of those liberals that had previously voted for the AKP because of the democratization issue and the perception that it was the better party to push that issue forward, and that the party has a mandate to continue its current evolution under Kılıçdaroğlu.

Q4. How high are the stakes in terms of the forthcoming rewriting of the constitution? Is the election result (for example, the difference between AKP polling above or below a two-thirds super-majority) likely to have a significant impact on the substance of the new constitution that gets drafted?

The stakes are incredibly high. Turkey obviously needs a new, civil-minded constitution. The problem is that there has been little consultation between the various stakeholders and political players in Turkey about what that constitution should look like. On top of that, the issue of introducing a French-style presidential system via the new constitution is incredibly divisive. In that sense, this election is really about whether the AKP will get above 330 seats, which will allow it to pass a new constitution and then put it forward for approval in a national referendum (if it got 367 seats, the party could pass the constitution outright, although that might be a less realistic goal). If it gets above 330 seats, the party could very well repeat the experience of last year’s referendum on a constitutional reform package, which saw the AKP pass the changes with little consultation and then sending it to a national vote, knowing that it had a good chance of winning that vote.

Logic would dictate that if the AKP gets less than 330 seats, then this would require the party to work with the other factions in parliament to draft a constitution that is more representative of their demands. But there are serious questions about if this kind of consultative process is possible in the current polarized political atmosphere of Turkey. While all the parties in the country might agree that there is a need for a new constitution, there is little evidence right now that they know how to work with each other and that the leading political personalities have the will to bridge the divide that exists between them.

Q5. What effect is this election campaign likely to have on the prospects for progress on the Kurdish question?

I think the Kurdish issue will emerge as a very significant one after the election. As mentioned before, Erdoğan took several steps back on the Kurdish front during this campaign (despite a visit to southeast Turkey’s Diyarbakır, where he promised several “crazy” projects for that city). The government’s “Kurdish opening,” after raising the hopes of Kurds that serious political changes are in the works, has also been floundering and was put aside for the sake of the campaign. The question now is how does the government pick up the shattered pieces and start the process of the “Kurdish opening” anew? The Kurdish demands—increased political and cultural autonomy, decentralization of the Turkish state, public education in the Kurdish language—are clear. What is less clear is how much of the political capital it will gain in this election will the AKP be willing to spend on the Kurdish issue and on meeting demands that they might have a hard time selling to the rest of Turkey (and even to themselves)?

]]>https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/gauging-the-likely-impact-of-sundays-election-in-turkey/feed/1istanbulnotesMr Erdoğan’s second Bosphorus: somewhat crazy, somewhat disappointinghttps://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/mr-erdogans-second-bosphorus-somewhat-crazy-somewhat-disappointing/
https://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/mr-erdogans-second-bosphorus-somewhat-crazy-somewhat-disappointing/#commentsWed, 27 Apr 2011 20:15:42 +0000http://istanbulnotes.wordpress.com/?p=863]]>Turkey’s prime minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, today revealed what he’s been plotting since 2008 when he first mentioned that he had a “crazy project” in mind for Istanbul. It turns out that he intends to build what in effect amounts to a second Bosphorus—a canal running north to south out on the western outskirts of the city, which would take much of the transit shipping that currently clogs the Bosphorus.

Viewed from a certain angle there’s no doubt that this is a bold undertaking. But for all that, I’ll confess that I’m a little underwhelmed.

Part of this reflects the expectations that Mr Erdoğan has kindled about this project. The prime minister is very much a six-crazy-things-before-breakfast kind of politician. So when he gives himself a three-year lead-in to formulate the outlines of a piece of monumental, legacy-scale craziness, it’s not unreasonable to expect something a bit more thoroughgoingly crazy than a waterway.

This brings us to a more substantial problem. Istanbul is already all about the water. There’s the Bosphorus obviously, but the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea too. That’s a pretty crowded market into which to pitch another waterway. And let me make this very predictable prediction right at the outset. If Mr Erdoğan’s canal is ever built, it will have none of the aesthetic charm, the overwhelming magnetic pull, of Istanbul’s other bodies of water.

The idea of celebrating the 2023 centenary of Turkey’s founding with a major project is not a bad one. But where one would have hoped for something stirring, and something rooted directly in the lives of the city’s inhabitants, Mr Erdoğan’s plan feels brutally functional.

It is true that the new canal would have significant indirect effects on the city’s population through its alteration of the volume and profile of the vessels permitted to use the Bosphorus. But that’s not what we’re being asked to marvel at. We’re being asked to stand in awe at the prospect of a 40km-long trench being dug between two seas. Perhaps I’m missing something, but surely this isn’t quite the stuff of which centennial dreams ought to be made?

Istanbul is no stranger to major feats of engineering which involve the city’s relationship to the water that surrounds and runs through it. The two bridges over the Bosphorus are the obvious examples. There are also the bridges over the Golden Horn and the long-planned tunnel under the Bosphorus. We could extend this list if we wished, and we can stretch it back in history to the early Ottoman era—in the Belgrade Forest and its surroundings you can still see the dams and aqueducts which were used to take water from what was then a village far outside the city and transport it into its heart.

Importantly, each of these previous projects involves a careful balance and an ongoing interaction between the city’s natural geography and the technological wherewithal of its inhabitants. By comparison, Mr Erdoğan’s plans display a blunt disdain for the city’s geography. A strip of land to the west of Istanbul will simply be erased. Should the focus of a national celebration not be charged with just a little bit more romance? This has all the subtlety of semtex.

Mr Erdoğan clearly wants to present himself as a visionary leader who is ready and willing to stamp the power of his imagination on the most significant city in his country. But there are many more imaginative things that he might have chosen to do, many other ways in which he might have sought to improve the lives of the city’s millions of inhabitants had he wanted to.

How about a serious attempt to remedy Istanbul’s criminal unpreparedness for the major earthquake that everyone knows is coming and that everyone knows will kill thousands upon thousands? How about an overhaul of the planning system to incorporate some awareness of the fact that the built environment isn’t an end in itself, but a means of furthering a wide range of human needs? How about overcoming the insanity that passes itself off as driving on Istanbul’s roads? How about a public library worthy of one of the world’s great cities? How about a commitment to retain what little green space is left here and perhaps recover some that has been lost? How about a concerted attempt to deal with the various countrywide factors that are driving crippling and unsustainable increases in the city’s population?

There is any number of legacy-scale projects to embark upon in Istanbul between now and 2023. A more interestingly crazy leader might have opted for something a bit more meaningful than digging a trench and filling it with water.